


said he’d love me for the rest of my days

by shaekspeares



Category: Ready or Not (2019)
Genre: AU: Daniel is brought back to life, Also fun symbolic shit abt Grace wanting the trad marriage to belong, And having to rediscover herself, Copious amounts of pointed flashbacks, Daniel: rip to my family but im different, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Grace getting over her wedding nightmare, Mentions of violence and gory deaths (duh), Post-Canon, Recovery, This fic is mostly two bitter traumatised people drinking together but supportively
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 19:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20551142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaekspeares/pseuds/shaekspeares
Summary: Most people spend the days after their wedding blissfully in love, maybe on a beach somewhere, reliving their best memories from the blessed day. Grace spends the aftermath of hers in hospital, and the most reliving she gets are the trauma-induced nightmares of her beloved husband and his family trying to brutally murder her to satisfy the literal devil.Then her dead husband’s dead brother comes back to life, and things get even more complicated. Maybe she should write a self-help book.





	said he’d love me for the rest of my days

**Author's Note:**

> title from “the devil’s gotten into my baby” by the devotions.
> 
> I’m obsessed with this movie & with Samara Weaving; also Alex is an undeserving bitch and Daniel deserved better, so. Here I am writing a novel about a uproariously gory horror-comedy movie, for some godforsaken reason. Some discrepancies with the movie may exist; this is more of a character-piece than a very faithful continuation of the plot.

Grace meets Alex in a student bar at some silly mixer, the first time, though he always says they met at some public event before. It doesn’t count, because they didn’t speak; she can’t even remember more than the quirk of his lips.

When they meet properly, she’s with an on and off boyfriend of hers, and it’s on his arm that she meets Alex’s eyes, feels herself smile without knowing why, the noise of the bar dimming for a magical second. In the moment she has the thought that this is romantic, but truthfully neither of them have romance in mind that first night. 

She nudges Steven, who looks over at Alex and snorts as he releases her; he’s not an idiot, and the break-up will be amicable. Alex’s gaze never strays off her, though, and she likes that.

It’s Grace who introduces herself first, always- she likes making friends, finds stating her case important with meeting strangers. It’s a habit she got from foster care. 

“I see you’re bravely choosing not to partake in competitive Twister.”

Alex laughs, quiet, his eyes warmly attentive,and he shakes his head like this is funny. “I thought I’d avoided board game night.”

“You did,” Grace admits, liking the way she has to lean in to hear him above the noise, not like he’s shy but like they’re talking privately. “Those are my friends. Or were. I don’t know if I can handle knowing them right now.”

“Their loss,” Alex says, and then, with old-fashioned charm: “I haven’t caught your name yet.”

“Grace,” she says, and smiles, all teeth. “How high do you think the owner was when he decided to make a bar out of an old mani-pedi joint?”

“Frighteningly sober,” Alex offers, which makes her laugh because he’s probably right. 

“Be honest, are you the owner?”

“I can’t believe you figured me out. It’s true: I was driven to it by my combined love of nail-care and alcohol.”

She remembers tucking a loose curl behind her ear and thinking that he caught her doing it but liked it anyway. “Somehow I don’t believe you.”

“Compulsive liar,” Alex confesses, in jest, and she laughs.

—

It takes three entire weeks for Grace to manage to sleep without medication. Not sleep the night, but sleep at all. 

She’d slept the first day, in the ambulance, almost as soon as they’d put her on the stretcher, an adrenaline crash, the kind of dead sleep you can only sink into after a bout of hysteria. Oftentimes she has the brief but potent thought that the hours between the manor and her awakening in the hospital were the highest point of her new life. 

Sleep evades her. At first she hadn’t wanted to sleep, brought to the point of hyperventilation at the idea of lying there vulnerable and unawares of external threats; it had taken endless negotiation with the medical staff to let them put her under, guarded by a rotating patrol of nurses. Now, though, she craves it, wishes she could extend the time in which she doesn’t have to face the reality of her own existence. But she doesn’t overdo it with the drugs, though the temptation is strong- the nightmares are too much as is.

The fucking nightmares are what keep her from sleeping. She lies in bed staring at the ceiling, fingers twitching like they often do now, forces her breathing to slow, mechanically goes through the motions, and the moment she starts fading she is brought screaming to her senses by whatever cocktail of memories decides to present itself to her. 

All of it is a sea of red, dizzying, overwhelming, always with that disjointed fucking nursery rhyme blaring in the distance, visions of one of the shitload of deaths she’d been so lucky as to witness or, hell, orchestrate. Viscous red gurgling from the nanny’s mouth, the sickening sound of her mother-in-law’s brains being bashed in, that goddamned fucking goat shed, punctuated sporadically by the grand finale, watching her beloved grovel for mercy before blowing up all over her. Always, always, she wakes up screaming, clutching her chest where the knife should have gone, so sure she’s on that table, in that house, that she couldn’t hide well enough. 

She entertains herself by trying to guess the daily aftermath. Vomiting violently? A panic attack? Silent, endless shivering? Her personal favourite: screaming for Alex, voice a broken sob?

They haunt her in the day, too. She hears a hum of classical music and drops to her knees. Any clicking sound makes her instinctively try and throw herself to the ground, shaking, expecting gunshots. The colour red, permeating the world like a disease. And everywhere, fucking everywhere, there are weddings, white dresses and pearly smiles, rings and vows and pretty things, promises and laughter and her burning, aching sorrow and rage, the bone-shattering kind of hurt. 

Some days she lies on the floor and looks at photos and cries, calls him back, dials his number so she can leave some garbled voicemail to a man who doesn’t exist, who never existed. 

The official story is- she doesn’t even care what the official story is. 

—

At the start, once she’s regained some semblance of conscious thought, finally emerging from the catatonic state she thinks she will be in until the day she dies, she is utterly convinced she will be framed somehow. It just seems inevitable, that after all of this just walking away won’t be possible. There’s a whole manor full of dead millionaires, and she’s some nobody whose story includes the Devil. So her chances- subpar.

By some twist of fate, though, whatever suspicion was cast on her doesn’t last longer than a day or two. She guesses it’s the injuries that help- the bullet hole, the stabbing wound, the rips to the flesh. The latter is real helpful, considering it matches the gate, considering it matches her being in the car, making that call.  Fucking Justin. 

When she gets around to having to talk, hoarse and twitchy in the hospital room, disapproving doctor hovering by the bedside, she thinks that helps too. Her lying there wrecked, blue eyed and virginal. 

She tells them about the game. She tells them the family were a bunch of fucking psychopaths who spent the night hunting her for sport, poorly, and is truthful in recounting her own actions: the butler’s face, Charity, her step-mother. Self-defence. She explains the other deaths, the ones she saw. 

She doesn’t mention the deal with Satan, or the man in the chair, or the fact she let her husband explode. The ending massacre she claims to have been unconscious for, but anyways no one suspects her of having anything to do with it, mostly because they’re still confused as to what the fuck happened to make like seven people spontaneously combust. 

She recounts all of this in a quiet monotone, distant, like a dream. She doesn’t swear, but the cops do, at intervals, under their breath or aloud. When she dispassionately recounts Alex’s betrayal one of them goes “Mother fucker !” loudly enough for her to stop talking and lick her dry lips. 

They pale, during the story, look sick, even. One of them keeps turning away to breathe at the wall, while she describes the nanny’s brains blown out, the crunching of the bell-weight, the the way she hooked her hand around the nail. The doctor alone remains unflinching, which she likes about him. 

She doesn’t think they buy it at first, not all of it, but her story lines up with every scrap of proof, because it’s true. 

There are more interviews afterwards, but they’re never accusative. 

She does ask them, once, what they’ve said about what happened at the end. 

“We think the poison Daniel Le Domas gave his family contained some extremely heat-sensitive chemical which was set off when the house started burning down. The timing’s a little iffy, but it’s the most probable cause.”

“You think he slipped his family some- some,” Grace says, stuck between disbelief and laughter. “Some?”

“Chlorine triofluoride,” the guy answers, missing her tone for horror. “You never know what these rich psychos will do.” 

“Yeah,” Grace says, no longer feeling like laughing. 

—

“Tell me about your family,” Grace says, incessantly, when they’re watching each other in silence late at night in bed, or lying on the couch, or crammed together in the train. Inevitably, Alex smiles crookedly. 

“I have told you how much I hate talking about them, right?”

“Yes,” Grace responds, with varying levels of sympathy depending on the context. “And I don’t believe you any more this time than last.”

Sometimes Alex frowns, looks fragile in a tired way, and Grace drops it, smooths the hurt away, because for all her teasing it’s tangible, that something in Alex is irreparably estranged from home. Other times he laughs under his breath and she presses, because for all his obfuscating Alex clearly loves his family, in the way that most people do, in the way that Grace has always been able to read, because orphans and unloved children have a knack for seeing that sort of thing. She hungers for it, maybe. For the stories about his crazy sister and her obnoxious husband, his mother and her Southern twang, his father and his comical fits of rage, his aunt who looks like a vampire, and his brother, always his brother, haunting every story. Daniel Le Domas is a petty alcoholic disappointment in a terrible marriage, and Alex loves him audibly, more than anyone, least resentfully of all. 

Grace’s closest family are, by all rights, her last foster parents, an elderly couple who treated her kindly and whose politics set her teeth on edge. She lived with them for four years, and they died within a year of each other when she was two years into university. 

Sometimes (often) she Googles Alex’s family, feeling guilty but not enough to refrain from doing so. It’s much easier to stalk your boyfriend’s family when they’re celebrities, or so you’d think; none of them have social media except for the company’s Instagram and Twitter accounts, where they make sporadic appearances. His aunt really does look like a vampire. 

They don’t look like a family she belongs in, but when Alex talks about them they sound so  human , so real and flawed and tight-knit despite it, that a part of her wishes she could meet them anyways. 

—

She stays in the hospital for what feels like an eternity, which she thinks distantly is probably for the better, but which does absolutely nothing to convince her that the events of her wedding night were something more than some bizarre hallucination. There are days where she honestly, dizzyingly believes (hopes) she’s in some kind of coma, or got hit by a bus, taken by terrorists, whatever, that when she gets out of hospital Alex- her Alex, grey-eyed and lovely- will be waiting with flowers. 

At first it’s a haze of intensive care; then gruelling physical recovery. She thinks they keep her longer than strictly merited because of her mental state, because they’re scared she’s going to off herself as soon as she leaves. Which she gets, really, she does, and it’s not like she particularly wants to live, but goddamnit, she didn’t let those fuckers get her in the house and they won’t get her out of it. Suicide is not on the table. 

The bullet-hole through her palm, of course, is the most concerning matter at hand, pun entirely unintentional. She sits as if removed from the situation, listening to doctors discuss fractured bones and torn tissue, the regenerative abilities of the flesh, the need for grafts and transplants and physical therapy. At times she feels the urge to tell them no thanks, just keep her hand as it is, gaping hole and all. It feels sort of sacramental now, like Jesus on the crucifix, though Jesus had holes on each extremity, she thinks.

She’d been raised a little of everything, but she guesses the Christians must have had it right all along, if the Devil is a real guy. A real guy who sits in armchairs like a Disney villain and gives you a little wink after murdering an entire family of failed Satanists. 

Maybe she should join a church. 

Most of her injuries heal well, given how soon they were treated; smooth silvery scars the only indication of their existence. Only the hand remains ugly, even after the transplants, mismatched and gruesome somehow. They suggest further operation, which she turns down. She likes it ugly. It seems wrong to have it prettied up. 

“If money is a concern,” the doctor starts, and Grace laughs, loud, a little unhinged.

“Money is not a concern.”

—

The funniest- the  funniest thing, in all of this, in this whole fucking batshit fiasco, is that she inherits it all. The whole entire Le Domas fortune, because she and Alex were, briefly, brilliantly married, and all the Le Domases are dead. 

When they first tell her this, Grace screams, then laughs, then cries, then screams again. 

“_Why_? ” 

“There is no closer living relative-“

It’s not what she’s asking. She thinks, amused in a crazy way, that she’s a divorced woman, if not in the eyes of God then in the eyes of Satan, and that these fucking idiot lawyers in the room don’t know it. 

Then she relents, because the fucking idiot lawyers have done nothing to her, and in fact the younger woman gave her a light on the hospital balcony. 

“How much is it?” Grace asks, eventually. “The Le Domas-“ She wants to say dominion. “Fortune?”

The lawyers exchange a glance. 

“Strictly speaking,” the woman begins, “The Le Domas heritage is valued at approximately five billion USD. Of course, this is net value-“

“Five  _billion_?” Grace says, and feels her throat seize with helplessness.

“It’s complicated to give an estimate,” the woman continues. “A lot of their money comes from assets, and we’re not counting the sports leagues because your claim to them is looser. We can dispute that, though.”

“We can,” Grace repeats, and sees them exchange a glance like they’re worried whether their client is in some kind of PTSD breakdown state, which she is. “What if I don’t want the money?”

“Excuse me?”

“What if I don’t want to touch a cent of their money?” Grace repeats, clearly. “What happens with it then?”

“We would have to start tracking more distant relatives,” the older guy says, then frowns. “Mrs Le Domas, if-“

“Please don’t call me that,” Grace says, quietly, feeling suddenly like her lungs are filled with blood. He has the decency to look apologetic.

“Look,” the woman says. “If you don’t want to touch their money, just give it all away to charity or something. Don’t let it go to some fucking cousin who’s gonna run everything the same way.”

“Clarisse-“

“I’m serious,” Clarisse repeats. “Buy yourself an orphanage, stop climate change, hell, hire a hitman, I don’t know. Better you than whoever else, right?”

They hold each other’s gaze, and Grace exhales, thinks about how much her hand hurts, about the sickly glow of the hospital lights, the way the sheets crinkle like paper when she has nightmares. Then she thinks about the shiny cigarette holder she has, stored somewhere in the hospital with the shredded remains of her wedding gown, and figures the principle of the thing is pretty much the same. 

“Yeah, okay,” Grace says. “Let’s save the whales or something.”

—-

When Alex proposes his eyes are so bright she thinks for a moment he might be crying, and it makes her elated response come just a moment out of sync. By the time she says yes his gaze has lost the split-second franticglow. She forgets all about it, of course, caught up in the euphoria of love, of being loved, of being loved enough to be kept. The ring is beautiful and Alex is wonderful and their friends are so happy. Grace is so happy. 

She thinks back on that moment now and wishes she could go back in time and slap the ring into the ground, scream herself hoarse. 

_If you really loved me more than anything, you’d have let me go. You’d let me walk away. _

He didn’t love her more than anything, anyways. Not more than his family. 

—

A month into recovery and things are- better. Not good, but better yes, because there were worse times. Now she manages to spend full weeks without catatonic meltdowns, eats sort of regularly, manages to restrain her panic attacks when something triggers her in public. She drinks too much, but she thinks she’s owed some leniency. Otherwise, sitting watching TV alone, the voices come through too clearly. 

The money is being handled. Most of it is gone already, off to charities, but so much is left, and she’s running out of things to do with it. It helped with the hospital bills, at least, given she lives in a country run by clowns who don’t believe in healthcare. 

There are days where she is crippled by misery so deep she can’t get out of bed. Thankfully, by some miraculous facet of her personality, she has never experienced survivor’s guilt, nor blamed herself for the sick deaths of her would-be murderers, but this does nothing to rid her subconscious of them. The nannies were innocent victims, at the very least, and the one boy had basically slept through it all. She had been ready to forgive Alex his childhood, at some point in the night. Even those whose deaths were deserved haunt her, the grotesque of it all, and their fear, stinking and ever growing. In a way they were all the victims of the curse, bound to rules decided by their ancestor. 

There are days where she is a real person, where she goes to the therapist’s and to the gym, buys her groceries, makes small talk with the neighbours. She lives alone in a tiny flat now, the best she could find at a moment’s notice to buy with her own money. She can’t set foot in their old apartment. Clarisse is the one who retrieved her belongings. Grace makes a list, things that matter. The rest she gets burned.

—

Grace falls in love with Alex instantaneously, so that she just wakes up one morning and knows. She has lists in her mind, the innumerable reasons why. His smile, his eyes, his denied love of chess and Oreos, his dislike of red wine, the way he rolls his socks. Mostly, though, it’s the way he looks at her, like she’s special, like it means a lot to him that he gets to be there with her. 

Grace feels like it means a lot for other people to let her be with them, to this day. It’s not often that it’s reciprocal, not with this intensity. Alex, somehow, gets it, wants her just as bad as she wants him. 

A lot of the time she struggles with reconciling them, the Alex of before and the Alex who played the game. The Alex she was madly in love with and the man she let die. It can’t be right to mourn one and curse the other, but she does, cries heaving tears into Alex’s old shirt, turns around to shake and hiss at him when she remembers the way he’d grovelled. 

When she’s in a crowd she feels watched, followed, which her therapist says is normal, given the nature of the game they played. Often she thinks she recognises one of them, has to restrain herself from collapsing or attacking. Most of all she sees Alex everywhere, in the street, in cafés, running to catch a train. She verges on self-loathing when she finds herself wishing for it sometimes. 

It is an intolerable anguish to hate someone you loved so badly, because neither emotion can ever feel honest again. 

—

It’s on one of the not so bad days that she sees him. She is walking home, a little sweaty from kickboxing class, glad for the way her tremors have stopped, finding the air crisp and marvelling that she can still notice such things, and when she looks up he is there, watching her, unmistakable.

Grace stands still. 

Her hands go numb and her heart nearly gives out, but she stands still. Her voice is caught in her throat, and she wants to shake but can’t move.

He walks to her, and still she is immobile. Then he stops, an arm’s length away, takes a breath.

“Hello, Grace,” Daniel says. 

Grace breaks his nose.

—

Afterward they sit on the floor of her apartment, Daniel pressing ice against his nose, not actually broken but bruised and bloody, and Grace keeps her eyes fixed on him like he might vanish if she blinks. He might, is the thing.

“I saw you die,” Grace tells him. Her voice is hoarse from disuse. “I saw the life leave you. You’re dead.”

Her fingers spasm against her legs; Daniel touches his nose delicately and then turns his tragic brown eyes on her, so unlike his brother that her pulse eases up a little. 

She has to keep calm or she will lose it and die. She can feel the nausea rise. If Daniel is alive, all of them- 

“Yeah,” Daniel says. “I’m legally dead too. I don’t know how. I woke up when everything was over. Home. I walked into town.”

“You’re dead,” Grace repeats. He shrugs, and his hands are shaking, she realizes.

“I know.“ He pauses. “I don’t have answers. I woke up where I died. This was- this was all.”

He’s gesturing to his throat, where there is a star-shaped spidery scar and no further injury. Grace inhales a long breath. 

“And the others?”

Daniel sets the ice down. “Dead. I went to the- I saw the remains. They’re- they’re all dead. I’m the only one.” 

His voice breaks over the last part, not even markedly, because the apathetic monotone he’d spoken in once has evolved into a constant hoarse mumble, and Grace believes him, not because of his voice but because she can feel in her gut that this is true. 

“The curse was real, then,” Daniel says, maybe asks. She meets his eyes. Asking, then. “They- when dawn came?”

“You don’t know,” Grace says, searching his expression. “You don’t know how it ended?”

“No.”

She licks her dry lips, pulls at a scab. “Do you want to?”

“I know they’re all gone,” Daniel says. “My whole- even Alex.” His voice is ragged now, and it hits Grace like a train, that he never knew. 

“I might as well know how.”

Grace, for a moment, wants to lie to him, but she’s gone off lies. So she tells him. Bit by bit. When it comes to Alex Daniel closes his eyes, and tears run slowly down his cheeks for the rest of the story. It’s more halting this time, harder to tell. By the end of it Daniel makes a wet, horrible laughing sound, and Grace wants to cry. 

“If I’d just stood up against it,” he says, eyes still shut, heavy with self-loathing, “If I hadn’t married her, if I’d told him-”

“But they were right about the curse,” Grace answers, dully. She’s surprised to find she is capable of the empathy she feels. “So he would have died no matter what.”

“You don’t know that,” Daniel replies, resting his head in his hands. “You don’t know that, because I’m alive.” 

“You’re alive because you did the right thing,” Grace understands, slowly, and he blinks. “You saved me. That’s- that’s why Alex had so much time. It was waiting for me to judge.”

Daniel goes still, and immediately fear punches the air out of her lungs. 

“You chose?”

Grace’s jaw trembles. “I did.”

For a moment there is thick silence, Daniel’s breaths heavy and his fists clenched knuckle-white, Grace on the verge of tears and reaching for a book to brandish. Then he just shakes his head minutely, sags.

“He could have- he could have. Goddamnit, Alex. Goddamnit.” 

He’s in tears now, and Grace lies back flat on the floor and listens to him cry. 

—

They get miserably drunk together, in near silence, slouched on the floor against the kitchen counter, and it feels bad and doesn’t help at all. Grace smells blood and hears whispers; whenever she throws up she expects to find flesh in the toilet bowl.

In the morning- in the afternoon, they get drunk again, watching TV re-runs. It’s awful, but Grace can’t face thinking, not now, not ever. She doesn’t want to talk about his dead family; she doesn’t want to ask what it means that he’s back, whether anyone else could be.

At some ungodly hour the next day she staggers upright, drags herself into the bathroom, brushes her teeth. Daniel is lying on his back on the counter when she returns, and he doesn’t even look particularly hungover, for all that he outdrank her by far. She guesses alcoholism has its perks. 

“Heading out?” 

She tries to get a shoe on, pauses to rest her forehead against the wall, nauseous. 

“I need food.” She doesn’t say _we_, because that would make her think about what the fuck he’s doing there, and her latent fear he’ll kill her in her sleep, and the fact he’s alive and was dead. 

Daniel makes a noise, then waves aimlessly in her direction. “Order in.”

She needs to get out, Grace thinks. She needs to get out of this claustrophobic flat, chockfull of grief and suffering, needs to get away from this fucking- zombie, whatever. 

“Fuck you,” she says, aloud. Then: “Do you like pizza?”

Daniel raises his head and gives her what passes for a smile. Grace lies back down on the floor.

—

They eat pizza. Grace manages to force herself to shower, feels less vile for it, ties her hair up. She tells Daniel he should shower, because he smells rank, like alcohol and sick and rot. 

“I don’t have any other clothes,” Daniel says, apathetically. They’re the clothes from the wedding. It’s been, what, a month? Grace retches a little, then she blinks. 

“Are we sure you’re not a ghost?”

“You punched me in the face,” Daniel says. When she continues staring he reaches half-heartedly for her arm, raps his knuckles against her wrist. It’s a very older brother thing to do; Grace inhales unhappily. 

“You couldn’t buy new clothes?”

“I’m legally dead, I told you. I don’t have any money. I’ve been living in junkyards.” 

Grace can’t imagine he’s much suited to life as a homeless bum. She feels- not sorry for him exactly, something more complicated. 

She gets to her feet, grabs his hand. “Go shower. You can wear my pyjamas.” 

He looks at her for one long moment, then he snorts humourlessly and follows her. 

While he showers Grace manages to open the window, let air in. Then she cleans the floor of bottles, throws the trash out, has half an anxiety attack, drinks whiskey, and orders another pizza. 

Her biggest sweatpants are too small for him, though not by that much; sit high on his legs and tight around his waist. The t-shirt fits, at least, an oversize she bought years ago. It’s funny; for all his failings she’s never seen him out of business-wear. She thinks they probably look like college roommates, hungover in their pjs, eating pizza. 

His beard has been tamed somewhat, but it’s a sloppy job. Grace watches as he squints against the light and falls into the couch. 

“I used your razor,” Daniel says. “It broke.”

“Sounds about right,” Grace says. 

They watch a Netflix series about people who can’t bake trying to bake. At a certain point Daniel mutters something under his breath and goes to fetch the whiskey. She thinks he’s going to drink from the bottle, but he pours it into a mug. 

“I have glasses,” she says.

“I know.”

She falls asleep on the couch; in the morning her neck feels sprained somehow.

—

“So you were resuscitated,” Grace says, some days into their arrangement. 

“It would seem so,” Daniel agrees. He’s changed sweatpants, and he’s wearing a t-shirt dress of hers. “Unless I gravely underestimated the gaping hole my wife shot into my throat.”

“The cops should have found you either way,” Grace murmurs, rubbing at the scars on her hand. He leans back, meets her eyes. 

“My family has been a Satanist cult for generations. I think we’ve established that the supernatural exists.”

“You think it was him? The- the Devil? He brought you back?”

“Who else?” Daniel shrugs. “One last mindfuck. I don’t know.”

God, maybe, Grace almost suggests, then thinks about how fucking stupid that sounds, and clears her throat. Whoever it was, she’s starting to think it’s pretty obvious why it happened. 

“I don’t think that’s what it is.”

Daniel laughs ruefully. “No? This isn’t some form of purgatory? Surviving my entire family for being the only one to betray them?”

Grace looks at him hard, then sets her jaw. “You saved my life. You’re the  only one who got me out of there alive.”

“I think you were responsible for that,” Daniel says, quiet and hoarse. 

His voice tends to taper off whenever they talk about it. Grace gets it. She doesn’t want to talk about it either. Doesn’t want to hear him talk about the fact she’s the reason his family are dead, and he chose to save her knowing this would happen. Chose to end the cycle. It’s- whatever his motivations, she respects him beyond words for it, but she doesn’t want to know what goes through his head about it. 

“I don’t think it’s meant to be punishment,” Grace tells him, instead of all of this. “I think it’s like a second chance.”

Daniel’s eyes flash, once, and for a moment she’s on edge, but then he sags.

“It doesn’t really matter what it’s supposed to be for.” 

After a while he drags a hand through his hair and stares unseeingly at her.

“I knew it was real, you know. The curse. I mean, Charity didn’t believe it, I don’t think she even cared if it was real. But I knew. And I- when Alex told me he’d found you I fucking- I knew.”

Grace flinches at the name. “Knew what?”

“I knew you’d marry him. I knew he’d pull that card. He was- the chosen child, you know. The one who saw him. My sister was always fragile, and I was- I don’t know, weak. But Alex was predestined somehow.” 

He exhales a long, shaky breath. “He was insistent you wouldn’t marry, of course. That was his loophole. And then one day you were engaged, and I was so angry with him. I was so- but he knew already, anyways. He’d made his mind up.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Grace says. Quiet. Daniel nods.

“Yeah, okay. I knew, is what I’m saying. I knew it would happen, and it would be Alex. And I thought I’d have to let it. Because if I didn’t my family would die.” 

His lips quirk. “As would I. I didn’t care so much about that. I think I could have gotten over my parents. But Alex- and Emilie has kids...”

“They were your family,” Grace manages, because she  gets it, really, which drives her to frustration, but she does. Even if she feels no regret for surviving- pity catches up to her, sometimes, for a family who wanted to save their own family. She understands that much. Not enough pity for her to lie down and die, but enough. Fuck your family, she’d said, and sobbed. 

“I told her not to have kids,” Daniel says, after a beat. “I certainly never did. But Alex would’ve. And Emilie never thinks- thought- things through. I told her to think about what she would be putting them through.”

“Why did you marry your wife?” Grace asks, cutting him off. She’s thinking of Daniel and Alex years ago, hiding. That little sicko who shot her. 

Daniel hums. “Charity?”

“You- it didn’t look like you loved her.”

“I didn’t,” Daniel replies. Sighs. “Or, hell, maybe I did, a little. I get attached.” He looks back at Grace. “Why do you want to know?”

She raises a shoulder, scratches at the scar. “It didn’t make sense to me.”

“It didn’t make sense that I’d married a gold digger who hated me?”

“No,” Grace says, plainly. “It made sense on paper. But you didn’t love her, and you didn’t want to have to play the games. You could have stayed single. Or never married.”

Daniel stares at his hands, swirls his drink around his glass. “We met through work. She was- she came from a rough background. And she was ambitious. She didn’t like me then, even if we slept together. But she knew who I was. She wanted that. She would have married my aunt if that had gotten her into the family.”

“And you gave her an in?”

There’s something torn about his expression, raw, miserably cynical. “I gave her an in.”

“Why?”

“She wanted it so bad,” Daniel mumbles. “I told her about the curse. She didn’t care. She barely blinked. Said if she died she’d die. So.”

He lifts the wine box, drinks. Grace thinks about Charity at the end, bargaining helplessly. Not so willing to die in the end.

“I don’t know what I would have done if Alex had told me.”

“I do.”

She looks at him; he smiles grimly. “You would have called him a liar. Then you’d have believed him and you would have said no. No, fuck off and die.”

“I love- I loved him.”

“You would have left,” Daniel says, eyes closed, peaceful looking. 

They sit in silence two, five, ten minutes. On the television someone is singing a remix of some Frank Sinatra song and Simon Cowell is applauding. 

Grace goes for a walk.

—

She doesn’t tell them about Daniel, obviously. She’s been recovering, slowly, a little; the therapist is actually good at his job, the best money can buy, and she thinks without him she’d have lost it by now. Telling him that one of the Le Domases has returned from the dead and is wearing her old socks isn’t going to do much for her, not least because she barely knows how to wrap her mind around it herself. 

Instead she tells the therapist she’s been talking to a guy who went through a similar experience, someone she met through counselling. Says he comes from a family like the Le Domases. Says this makes her feel panicked and suffocating on some days, but also like they have an understanding. So she’s not sure what to do with him.

The therapist is wary but encouraging. Reminds her that she can cut the guy off at any time, if it gets too much. Tells her how important it is to set boundaries early on.

“He’s living in my apartment,” Grace says. Her therapist freezes a little.

Once that all blows over, they move to less troubled territory, and it gets a little weird, talking like Daniel is some new friend of hers instead of her dead husband’s dead brother returned to life. The therapist asks her what she dislikes about him. 

“He reminds me of them.” 

_That’s all?_

“He’s callous. And he’s given up.”

It’s not a long list, but then she doesn’t know him very well. 

_ Is there anything you do like about him? _

“He’s alive,” Grace says. Which is funny. When the therapist says nothing she sighs. “I don’t know. He’s a good guy, I think. Overall.”

The therapist considers her, then sets her pad down. “Do you think he’s attractive?”

I don’t think I can ever let a man touch me again, Grace wants to say. I don’t think I can breathe with a man close to me. I think if someone tells me they love me I’ll kill them, with my bare hands. Daniel Le Domas could be fucking Brad Pitt and I wouldn’t know if I found him attractive. 

Out loud she says: “He’s got nice hair.”

—

Daniel is the first one she meets. Alex is nervous ahead of it, trying not to be. He’s good at hiding his feelings, Grace has found, which she thinks is cute, that sort of unnecessary upper class poise. 

He hasn’t seen anyone in his family for years, but he’s spoken to his brother, she knows. Often enough. Now they’re engaged, to be married before the year ends, and so Alex’s self-imposed estrangement is to end at least temporarily. 

Daniel, she suspects, is the stepping-stone, for both herself and Alex, to ease their way in. 

She knows a lot about him, but somehow has no idea what to expect of him regardless. She knows what he looks like, at least- tall, dark haired like Alex, handsome like all of his family, and otherwise in no way resembling his brother. Alex is the blue eyed boy wonder of the family, clean shaven and studious looking, sharp with a gentle sheen. His brother and sister both have dark eyes, and neither seems as approachable. Emilie, the youngest, always has a faint air of desperation about her, something skittish in her smiles. Daniel is more of a mystery. 

“Grace,” she says, when she meets him. “I’ve heard so much.”

He’s handsome up close too, of a different variety than his brother, one she’s less drawn to. Ruffled, cynical. His whole expression conveys a sort of wry amusement, only belied by the intense dark of his eyes, which she finds inscrutable. 

“Daniel,” he says, offering a hand. His handshake is firm but sloppy, thoughtless. “I can see why Alex has lost his head over you.”

She laughs in surprise, almost blushes, laughs again. So he’s this kind of embarrassing brother. Alex smiles, a touch belatedly. “You have a wife, Danny. Just reminding you.”

“We can swap,” Daniel offers, grins when Alex rolls his eyes. Grace bites down another laugh. “What do you think, Grace? I promise I’m a lot more fun.” 

“Maybe after the divorce,” Grace counters, which makes Alex laugh. 

“Smart,” Daniel smirks. “Get out with the money. That’s what I would do if I was being propositioned by a Le Domas.”

“Is it?” 

He laughs again, his eyes on the window, reflecting the sun. “No. I’d run screaming.”

“Grace doesn’t run from things,” Alex says, mildly, in a tone that makes her smile quizzically. Daniel looks at his brother, then, and his mouth twitches downwards but all he does is shrug.

Now she can imagine what he’d wanted to say. 

_ Maybe she should start to. _

—

“Do you think- what do you think he would have done?” Grace asks, one day, when they’re leaving the shitty overpriced Starbucks near her flat, Daniel wearing her sunglasses and night-gown and looking supremely unconcerned about this. It’s not the first time they’re out in the open together, but it’s not a regular occurrence. “After he killed me. If it had worked.”

Daniel slurps his awful drink (chai venti latte with two shots of syrup and two shots of whatever, which she knows he poured a full flask of vodka into) like it’s divine nectar and crosses over a red light, cars honking furiously as they screech to a halt. 

“Who was dead by that point again?” 

Grace’s hand cramps and her shoulder aches. “Three nannies, you, your wife, your mom. Oh, and Stevens.”

Daniel nods, finishes his drink. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t have killed himself. Not the type. I guess maybe Aunt Helene would have taken him under her wing and convinced him he’d become his true self or what the fuck ever. But I don’t see him buying that.” 

“What- I mean, you remember her from before the wedding, right? She loved him?” 

“Helene? Yeah.” Daniel tosses his drink, leans against the wall while she gets her keys. “Yeah. She was the only one who didn’t tell, besides Alex. Who tried to keep it a secret. She loved him. Actually, I kind of forgot what she was like before. Intense, but like- nice, and funny. A little like Emilie, if she had any common sense.”

Fragile, Grace thinks. That whole fucking family was fragile- Tony with his hysterics, Emilie, Alex’s meltdown, Helene’s desperate convictions. Even the tough ones lost it towards the end. Only Becky, she thinks, would have taken death coolly. 

She looks at Daniel, corrects the  _was_ to  _is__. _They’re not all gone. 

“Who do you take after in your family?”

—

“Who do you take after in your family?” she asks Alex, when they’re packing. He sends her a confused look. “I mean, like, who- you know, are you a momma’s boy, or-“

Alex groans, sets his shirt down. “Stop it. We’re seeing them for the wedding, that’ll sate your curiosity.”

“Come on, Alex,” Grace grins. “I’ll stop asking once I’ve met them. Indulge me.”

“This whole wedding is because of you,” Alex mutters, looking lost for a moment. “God, I don’t know. I don’t think any of us have much in common.” 

“What about your brother?” Grace teases, which makes him smile. “I see a resemblance there.” 

“Wait until we’re married to cheat on me, please.” He shakes his head. “Daniel and I aren’t very alike. He’s- he internalises things, I think. Kind of like Emilie, I guess. I’m more like my mother. Practical.” 

“Practical,” Grace echoes. “Which is why you nearly turned my wedding dress pink in the wash this morning.”

Alex laughs, takes her into his arms. “Fine, so you’re the practical one. Maybe I take after my dad, marrying you.”

“Maybe you’re special,” Grace suggests. “Unique. The Le Domas white sheep.”

She can tell he likes the idea, though he shakes his head. “If I am it’s thanks to you.” 

She’s tempted, not for the first time, to ask him what exactly his family has done that he thinks they’re all so terrible, but she knows it’s sensitive territory, and asking so close to their visit seems foolish. It’s not like she can’t guess, anyways- they’re millionaires. Not exactly a popular crowd. 

“So, you’re the white sheep, your sister’s the black sheep-“

“No, that would be Danny. Dad adores Emilie.”

“Okay, fine. You’re the white sheep, your brother’s the black sheep, and I’m a humble shepherd-“ 

“You’re ridiculous, is what you are,” Alex reproaches, and kisses her quiet. 

—

Clarisse has coffee with her in the Starbucks, and Grace is dressed and showered and clean, only a little hungover. 

“My therapist says I wanted to get married so I could feel like I was part of a family. So I could feel claimed. Complete.”

“Sounds like bullshit.” 

“I think it’s true.”

“No, I mean, I think that your marriage dream sounds like bullshit,” Clarisse clarifies, pouring sugar into her black coffee. “God, this place is a rip-off.”

Grace watches her stir the coffee. They’ve met with sporadic regularity since the hospital, mostly about her money, since she’s got Clarisse on her payroll, but nowadays about other things too. 

“So you worked in divorce law?”

Clarisse snorts. “I mean- briefly. But that’s not it. I have nothing against marriage. I just think you have to know what you’re getting into. Most people don’t. Getting married into a family of rich psychopaths is an extreme, sure. But the amount of people- women- who go into it thinking they’ll be fulfilled...” 

Grace tears at a sugar packet. “I thought I was- whatever, a strong woman. Independent. But I think secretly I thought once I was married I’d feel like a real person.” 

“Women don’t get to be people. Women get to be women, or no one at all.”

“You lawyers really know how to cheer a girl up,” Grace says, and smiles when Clarisse pulls a face. “My therapist did warn me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Clarisse sighs, meeting her eyes sharply. “You look better, though. Hungover. But better.”

“Time heals all wounds,” Grace declares sarcastically, then relents. “How can you tell for the hangover? I tried so hard.”

“Hence the fact I can tell,” Clarisse says. “You haven’t turned into an alcoholic, have you? We’ll get you into some detox centre if you like. I hear the one Elton John was in is still running.” 

“I’m not an alcoholic,” Grace dismisses. “I’ve cut down a lot. I was drinking socially last night.”

“Right,” Clarisse says. “I thought you hadn’t seen your university friends since the wedding.”

“I haven’t.”

“Is it a guy?” Clarisse asks, raising a brow. 

“I guess it is.” 

“Interesting,” Clarisse says. She finishes her coffee. Then, abruptly: “Come have lunch at mine. I’ve got the afternoon off.”

“Okay,” Grace blinks, surprised. “Why?”

“I don’t know, we’re friends, you look pathetic,” Clarisse says, standing, which is nice of her, Grace thinks. “And you need to tell me about this guy.”

“Friends,” Grace repeats, lips quirking upwards, because it’s the most important part of the sentence. “Here I thought money couldn’t buy friendship.” 

“That applies to everyone except lawyers and prostitutes,” Clarisse declares, and then smiles, briefly. “They’re very similar jobs.”

“To the lawyers and prostitutes,” Grace says, cheerily, and throws her gross chai tea out.

—

She and Daniel pore over her finances from the couch she thinks she should start to call his bed, considering it has sheets (her spares) and pillows (bought online) and his (half her) pyjamas stowed beneath them. It’s something she’s put off doing until now because it’s another layer of surreal discomfort, acknowledging that she’s inherited his whole family fortune free of Satanic influence, after everything. Especially because Daniel has access to none of it, not unless he marches up to a police station and announces he’s come back to life. 

He refuses to do this, incidentally. Refuses to take back his name, mostly refuses to take back his life. Grace doesn’t push it. It’s a bad idea, she thinks; he’d be hounded by the media for one, and that’s without getting into the practicalities. 

“I don’t know,” Daniel says. “You’re sure you don’t want to invest in anything? You could let the money grow and then donate more than you have now.” 

Looking over the accounts has given him a brief spark of- something, something different. He worked for the company, of course, and was good at it, she suspects, for the first time. Shit, maybe he’s some financial genius or something. She just started assuming the whole fortune was dropped in their lap, which it was, but maybe some of the Le Domas family actually developed some technical knowledge over the years. Alex was certainly clever enough. 

“Get that look off your face,” Grace says. “I’m not making more of this. I want it all gone. It’s hard enough to disperse as it is.”

“Okay,” Daniel responds, thoughtfully. “Why not help pay off some national debts? I can name several countries who owe the IMF millions.” 

“Jesus,” Grace says. Then snorts. “Shit, let’s do that, then.” 

Daniel passes her laptop back, and the spark of self-possession dims, his expression wan. She looks at him, bites her tongue.

“What name do you want?” 

“What?”

Grace shrugs. “If you’re not gonna come back to life, you’re still gonna need some kind of ID so we keep you out of trouble. There’s the money for it.”

Daniel raises a brow. “Keeping me out of trouble.” 

“Yeah,” Grace says. “If you get arrested without papers- if you travel- if you need medical care- you’ll be hard pressed to explain why your prints match some dead millionaire.” 

“My prints aren’t in the FBI databases,” Daniel says. His smile is mocking. “And what’s the worst they’ll do to me? Lock me up? It hardly matters.”

“Why not?” Grace asks. She’s getting angry, feels it hot and resentful in her chest. “You planning on, what, drinking yourself to death? That’s what you’re gonna do with your life?”

“Sounds about right.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Grace snaps. “You got brought back from the dead and you’re taking the opportunity to kill yourself all over again?”

It’s the wrong thing to say; he sneers impassively, looking like the self-important rich asshole he is on paper. 

“Yes, Grace, how ungrateful I am, for having thought my lone good deed would at least spare me from having to face the deaths of my entire family-“ 

“Damn it, don’t you think I get that? I lived through that entire night! I know-“ 

“No, you  _don’t_!” Daniel interrupts, eyes burning with abrupt intensity, the same kind Alex had when he grabbed her face, making her freeze. “_You_ killed some strangers trying to murder you and let the rest get offed by the devil.  _I_ made a belated attempt at saving your life knowing my  whole fucking family could die as a result. Do you realise how sick that is?”

“You stopped them from murdering someone,” Grace protests, shaken, “Christ, you were saving a life-”

“Even Alex could do it,” Daniel snaps, a strange sort of frantic. “Even fucking- after everything, because he cared too much to let the rest of us bite it- and I saved you over _all of them_.”

“That is not why he did it, are you fucking kidding me?” Grace yells, loud enough that they both pause, chests heaving. Daniel’s unreadable eyes are open books of distress, and she exhales harshly. 

“That’s not why he did it,” she repeats, quieter. 

“He did it because he was afraid, because he knew I’d leave him and he didn’t want to be alone. I- it was about you, yes. But when he was- at the end, he was begging for me back, he was saying he was wrong.”

She takes a shaky breath. “He wasn’t doing the right thing, or- he was just doing the easy thing.”

They stare at each other in silence a moment, and Grace feels like she can see herself through his eyes, blonde and demented. 

“I was scared too,” Daniel says, numbly, after an eternity. He’s calm again, or maybe just punched out. 

“Scared of the kids. Once I saw they were just like the rest of us-“ 

He shakes his head, flexes his fingers distractedly. Grace gets it, now. Gets that it wasn’t really about her but about them, about needing to see their cursed history come to an end. In a bizarre way she thinks he sort of did it  for his family, to set them free from the fear haunting their every step. 

Grace thinks about university, a lifetime away, a time defined by late night studies and laughter. Feels like a stranger to herself. A woman or no one at all. 

In the early days one of her most recurring nightmares had been reliving Daniel’s death, the complete disbelief that someone had saved her, the horror of watching him take a bullet for her. She’d said thank you then and felt like a monster. Since he’s come back to life she hasn’t said it again, but she’s thought it at him, like he can read her mind. 

“You’re a good guy,” Grace tells him, voice breaking a bit, because life is such a  _joke, _because she was going to get  married and now she’s sitting on a shitty couch reassuring her dead husband’s undead brother of his moral value. Fuck. 

“You’re a really good guy, Daniel.”

Daniel just laughs disbelievingly into his hands, and then he looks up at her with a desperately searching expression. She holds his gaze even as her eyes well up. He looks so very lost. 

“I was a coward my whole life,” Daniel mumbles.

“Not your whole life,” Grace counters, fiercely. “You were the only person with a soul in your whole godforsaken family. You know that? The only person. That’s why you’re here now.”

“Fuck,” Daniel mutters, and digs the heel of his palms into his eyes. “Jesus, Grace.”

“Yeah,” Grace agrees. Then somehow she’s reaching forwards and his hands still by her sides and they’re holding onto each other for dear life, not crying, just clutching, silently. Grace takes slow breaths, fingers digging into his back, and feels okay. Feels human. 

They fall asleep on the sofa, and they don’t talk about it in the morning but they don’t not talk about it either; exchange wry glances and roll their eyes, and it’s fine.

—

Grace’s nightmares are vivid, vicious, sensual; the pain translates into reality, and she is always running, always hurt. When she wakes up it’s screaming, panting, poised for a fight. 

Daniel’s nightmares are long, psychological horrors, his imagination supplying the deaths he never witnessed, Freudian guilt and confusion. Mostly he doesn’t wake from them, but sometimes he does, and once he screams  She’s here! She’s here! and Grace struggles to look him in the eye over breakfast. 

—

There is still money left in the account, but Grace goes to get a job anyways, because Daniel categorically refuses to trust Mr. Le Bail to keep them going forever and besides she’s going stir-crazy. 

She goes for interviews that all go smoothly, and wonders how many of the interviewers recognise her from the newspapers, whether they think of her as a traumatised victim or a cold-blooded murderer. She’s always been a high scorer, above average in her chosen field, but maybe infamy helps, because she lands the NASA opening, of all things, even with the month-long  leave from her previous lab. It’s hardly an illustrious position, and the pay is meagre, but the only real issue she has is that she has to move down to Florida for it.

When she tells her Clarisse says: “You’re a rocket scientist?” 

“I design computer systems, actually,” Grace corrects, “But I have a specialisation in the kind of tech NASA needs to work on mock-ups for the Launch Abort system on the Orion MPVC. So.”

“I can’t believe you never told me you’re a rocket scientist,” Clarisse replies. Then: “You have to go.”

“To Florida?” Grace says, sceptically. Clarisse snorts.

“Please, you’re dying to go. Sunshine and spacecraft and alligators; it’s the kind of batshit insane you love.”

“I’ll miss you too much,” Grace counters, then sighs, frazzled. “And I’m not sure if I’m ready for a job like this.”

“I’m down in California half of the time anyways,” Clarisse dismisses, “We can arrange some transfer, whatever.” 

Her gaze softens. “And you’re ready, Grace. You’re a strong girl.”

“I just don’t want to break down.”

“If you do, you know who to call,” Clarisse says, squeezes her shoulder. “You’ll keep therapy up, you’ll work in a field you love. You’ll do great.”

“Aw, fuck,” Grace sighs, smiling. “I think you’re right.”

“I know,” Clarisse replies. “What are you doing about your boytoy?”

She tells Daniel and doesn’t know what she wants to hear from him. Part of her is daring him to say goodbye, to vanish, because she doesn’t need him, really doesn’t, can feel it in the thrum under her skin, but part of her wants to drag him bodily to Florida, where she can see him, where there is bound to be bad wine and cold pizza to share. 

“I’ve never been to Disney World,” Daniel says, eventually, somewhat sardonically. Grace blinks. 

“What?”

“There’s still money left to spend,” Daniel repeats, something skittish in his gaze. “And I’ve never been to Disney World.”

Slowly, Grace grins, big and toothy and excited for the first time in months, and he smiles back. 

“Disney it is.”

—

Florida is hot and humid and full of weirdos and nothing at all like the dream life she and Alex had all planned ahead, and she loves it for it. Loves the gross flip-flops she can wear to work sometimes, loves the red-necked tourists and their yowling children, loves the swamps and the sticky late summer heat. 

They spend two months settling in, cautiously, August rolling around at a snail’s pace even as work whizzes by. Everything at work is exciting, the big board of calculations her coworker Matt insists on keeping up because he loves Pacific Rim, the sleek surface of the Orion, the way at any given moment the lab will devolve into an incomprehensible technical jargon that Daniel makes fun of at home. Grace feels more alive than she has since the wedding night, weeps embarrassingly when her code gets submitted. There is a common sense of purpose amongst them, and she loves it fiercely.

In their apartment she hangs a model of the solar system she buys from IKEA, and Daniel builds her a Lego spacecraft on a whim, some latent older brother instinct to impress maybe. It hangs proudly in their living room. 

There are two bedrooms in their apartment, but they spend little time alone in their rooms. Daniel has a job, sort of, doing finance for some app, but he works on his laptop, so he doesn’t have workdays; he picks her up from work most of the time, honking the shitty car Grace bought because the 666 numberplate made her laugh. 

Daniel drinks less, swims in the mornings, and on good days his eyes shine and he is endlessly charming, making their elderly neighbour giggle like a schoolgirl and Grace laugh herself sick, playing movie vinyls and reading Cummings. On bad days he is a soulless, unresponsive husk of a man, eyes haunted and face gaunt, bottles littering the floor; on bad weeks he starts following her with his eyes, silently, relentlessly, and the scar on his neck seems to pulse with promise. 

On okay days, which is most of the time, he is prone to spells of silence, eyes fixed and unseeing, to painful bouts of self-loathing, to not being able to hold the steering wheel; also to cooking dinner without burning it and calling her during office hours to amuse her coworkers, to helping her through her hand exercises and mock arguing with the television, to lying listening to blues with his eyes closed and his foot twitching to the rhythm. Grace has her own rhythms, mirroring his, and they take turns being the ones who clean up the mess, and it’s all exhilaratingly okay.

They never discuss what the plan is. There is none, so far as Grace can tell, only to keep living somehow and to stick together, and that is more than enough for her, she finds. 

“It’s not codependency,” she tells her new therapist, honestly. “We could both move out by now. But I wouldn’t want to.”

“You’re satisfied with your life.”

“I like my work,” Grace shrugs. “I like my coworkers. I like Florida, for all that people here are deranged and sweat like pigs. And I like my flatmate, who’s a decent guy.” 

“So?”

“So I’d say I’m satisfied,” Grace concedes. “Not quite happy, but satisfied.”

Her therapist smiles, in a very therapist way, though sincerely, she thinks. “That’s very good news, then.”

“Thank you.”

They sit in companionable silence, then the other woman meets her eyes curiously. 

“Tell me, Grace- do you ever think about marriage? New York? Pursuing the life you’d expected to have?” 

She bites her lip in thought. “Yes. No. I think about it, but I don’t want it. I don’t think I could stomach it even if I did.” 

“That’s only natural,” the woman says, understandingly. “I tell a lot of my patients this, but marriage really isn’t a necessary checkpoint in life. Love exists perfectly healthily without it, and inversely there are so many unhappy marriages. I think your current arrangement is a very good one for you both, as long as you know where you stand.”

“I’m sorry?” Grace asks, taken aback. The therapist frowns. 

“I was under the impression you and your flatmate-“

“Oh,” Grace says. “Oh, fuck no. We’re not together.”

“I apologize for misunderstanding,” the woman starts, Grace still staring, feeling inappropriately like laughing. “You just seem very close.”

“Yeah,” Grace says. “That’s okay.” 

That night is a bad one, and when she stops screaming the light is on and Daniel is standing in the doorfame, tousled and rubbing at his eyes. In the morning he’s still there, fast asleep across the bottom of the bed, and Grace leans to press a finger against his pulse, listens quietly to the steady beat of his heart.

—

“Of course he’s in love with you,” Clarisse says, unfazed, when Grace subtly brings it up in the last week of August, the two of them side by side on the beach. Clarisse hates the beach, complaining about the sand, but she puts up with it for Grace, who loves sitting barefoot with her toes under it. They’re sharing a bottle of rosé. “What? Don’t give me that look.”

“I didn’t say anything about being in love,” Grace mutters darkly. When Clarisse lowers her sunglasses at her she groans. “Lawyers are sociopaths.”

“Look, the guy moved to Florida for you. That’s a sacrifice I would never make. He got a job so you wouldn’t be the sole breadwinner, he’s trying to stop drinking, you have a weird trauma bond. That’s not just wanting to get laid.”

“Friendship exists,” Grace retorts, rubbing at her legs. “Especially weird trauma bond friendship.”

“Florida,” Clarisse repeats. “Anyways, if you want a real assessment, you could let me meet the guy.”

Grace frowns at the sea and searches for an answer. She wants to, obviously. But she’s scared it’ll go wrong somehow, and more than that she’s scared Clarisse will recognise him. “I’ve told you it’s complicated.”

“Yeah. What isn’t?  You’ve met Selene.”

Grace has, and she smiles at Clarisse. “Selene’s not quite Daniel.”

“Right, Selene is only my barrister girlfriend whose father I work for,” Clarisse snorts. “No conflict of interest there.”

“You met her at a  _Broadway show_. It’s hardly nepotism.”

“It’s a mess is what it is,” Clarisse sighs, then sets her sunglasses on her head, green eyes like lakes. “Come on. We’re going to yours. I want to meet your boyfriend.”

“ _Clarisse_ _,_” Grace groans, pulling her down. “He’s not even in.” 

“Don’t Clarisse me. You’re the one who strong-armed her way into my personal affairs, and I demand retribution.”

“I let you meet Matt from NASA.”

“You let Matt from NASA meet me.” 

“Oh, fuck you,” Grace laughs, and hugs her one-armed. “You can meet him, I promise. Just give me a little time, okay?”

“Fine,” Clarisse relents, unimpressed, and wipes sand off her dark legs. “In the meantime, think about the fact you’re probably into him too.”

—

She can’t talk to Clarisse or Daniel about it, so she tells Matt from NASA, then the whole rest of her team. Not the Before, but the Now, and just enough context for it to be understood properly. People have always marvelled at Grace’s love for the sciences, assuming her sociability would be a nuisance to her in a lab, but she has always believed scientists to make the best friends, and is proven right by the fact all of her immediate coworkers absorb the elements of her tragic tale with no visible output, approaching it only as relevant data.

“Well, you both like each other, which is neutral information,” Sylvie says, as they walk the halls. “Could go either way.”

“He used to flirt with you, albeit jokingly,” Connor supplies, typing away. “That’s a maybe.”

“He hasn’t made any moves yet,” Jennie reminds her, during coffee break. “Not during all this time. I’m thinking no.”

“He built you a spacecraft, dude,” Matt says. “And he looks at you like you’re his Padmé.” 

“For fuck’s sake, Matt,” Grace says. “Stop rewatching those movies.” 

In reality nothing happens between them that confirms either theory. They touch often, never sexually, and she thinks she loves him, deep in her gut, and probably will for the rest of her life, after what they’ve been through, but she’s never met his eyes and felt butterflies, or felt the world spin slower when he took her hand. 

Daniel is a mystery to her in his own way. She doesn’t know what he does when he’s in love. He certainly never seemed to love Charity, and his hitting on her always seemed part of the act, not from some sincere affection on his part. She wonders if he ever had a serious girlfriend. 

“No,” Daniel answers, when she asks. Then he cracks a smile. “Did have a serious boyfriend, once, briefly. But we got along too well, so I dumped him.” 

Grace marvels at him, then laughs in disbelief. “You had a boyfriend? Seriously? When?”

“University,” Daniel snorts. “He was Alex’s TA afterwards, which was awkward.” 

“You really liked him?”

“Well, yeah,” Daniel says, kind of reluctantly now, like it’s something he doesn’t like to admit. “We were good friends too. But it’s been years since I even thought about the guy.” 

“What’s his name?” 

“Jack Edmon- why exactly do you want to know?”

“Jack Edmonton,” Grace says, loudly, then smiles at her Facebook page. “He lives in Orlando.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Daniel says, disbelieving. “You’re actually fucking ridiculous.” 

Upon stalking, Jack Edmonton’s Twitter includes an oddly heartfelt post written about Le Domas fire and how saddened he was to hear three of his university acquaintances had met such a tragic end. It’s short and reserved, but he sounds very sad, which is what Grace uses to argue Daniel out of his refusal to reveal himself to the outside world. 

“If he turns out to be an asshole we’ll hire a sniper,” she says. “We have a lot of money left.”

“Christ,” Daniel says, and goes to pour himself a drink. 

Grace sends Jack a friend request, which he accepts within the half hour.

—

“How hauntingly familiar you look,” Clarisse says, when Daniel extends a hand. Her tone is very neutral. “Have you done any recent ad campaigns?”

“Afraid not,” Daniel answers, shaking her hand. He handles it well, but Grace knows he’s nervous, mostly because he told her so repeatedly all day, in the form of dry complaints. “It’s good to meet you. Grace is always singing your praises.”

“Uh huh,” Clarisse says, and keeps their eyes locked for another ten seconds before she turns to Grace. 

“You insisted,” Grace reminds her, over her cigarette. She’s a stress smoker. Clarisse wrinkles her nose. 

“Dan,” Jack calls, blissfully interrupting the Texan standoff by dragging Matt from NASA over, “Settle a dispute here. I could bench Matt, right?”

Daniel looks at Jack, who is about Grace’s height and looks generally like a deer in human form, then at Matt, who is about six foot two and is naturally built like a Harvard rower, then nods. “Jack could snap you like a twig.”

“Okay,” Matt says, looking vaguely horrified and also like he’s scanning Daniel for any latent displays of being secretly madly in love with Grace. “I believe you. I just didn’t want a practical demonstration because I don’t want to be sued for accidental assault.”

“Not a thing,” Clarisse says, and smiles like a shark. Matt stares at her like she’s his worst nightmare and his wildest dream wrapped in one, and Daniel raises his brows at Grace, amused. She smiles back, slightly abashed. The event is weird, she knows, but there wasn’t much choice. She had to let Clarisse meet him after the Jack thing. 

She hadn’t honestly thought they’d meet him at first, but hell, life is short and turbulent. They’d met in a coffeehouse and Jack had dropped his coffee, promptly caught it again, stared at Daniel, put down the coffee, and hugged him off his feet. 

It had taken worryingly little to convince Jack not to share the news of Daniel’s survival, which they explained away by downplaying the extent of his injuries; he had called it a modern miracle and declared renouncing nihilism with such zest Grace finally figured out half the shit he said was pure sarcasm, and liked him even better. Daniel spent the whole meal suppressing smiles, so the least surprising event of the night was Grace’s firm invitation for Jack to see them again the next day. Since then he’d casually wormed his way into their little bubble, chain-smoking with Grace as he dispassionately explained how prostate cancer was fucking him at work that day or crowded into Daniel’s space to debate his taste in movies.

After that, going to the the NASA social with Daniel had felt sort of compulsory, and they’d gotten spectacularly drunk outdrinking Nanette from the astronomy lab, marking Daniel as a legend of the comptech department by proxy. Somehow these events had created them a social circle of sorts, wherein all the NASA workers were either oblivious or indifferent to Daniel’s real identity and Jack simply wouldn’t tell on them. 

Clarisse, thus, is unexpectedly the wildcard. 

She doesn’t mention it once all night. She talks, dances, drinks, critiques, and every time Grace thinks she’s going to talk about it she doesn’t. It would make her more worried, but a stint of rebellious recklessness refuses to let her start panicking about something so mundane as the law after the shit she went through, and besides she’s distracted by all the people. 

When people start trudging home in the early hours of the morning, Clarisse sidles up to Grace with a smoke looking like an eighties businesswoman (which Grace knows for a fact she’s trying to do, even though she pretends otherwise) and nods towards the last dregs of the party, Connor arguing red-faced about why exactly Elon Musk should choke on his dick and die. 

This is the moment, Grace knows, and holds her breath a little, swaying from the alcohol. 

“Matt from NASA is into your boyfriend’s ex,” Clarisse announces, and takes a long drag. 

Grace takes one hard look at her, then snorts. “You’re shitting me.”

Clarisse leans in so their heads are touching, softened by drink. “He’s into him, but he won’t know it for months.” 

Grace looks over at Jack, brandishing his cocktail umbrella with military precision as he mimes stabbing his latest client, at Daniel, hiding his laughter in his scotch, and Matt, flinching out of stabbing range with wide eyes and something vaguely awed in his expression. 

“Well, shit,” Grace says, then cackles loudly; Clarisse grins lazily at her, and while she’s doubled over laughing the other woman leans casually into her, lips brushing near her ear so very accidentally. 

“You landed the hotter brother, you know.”

When Grace straightens she’s vanished in a cloud of smoke. 

—

Things are going well, and thus necessarily go terribly. One of the guys from the course calculation section is getting married and invites them; Grace’s therapist is cautiously against it, and Daniel only raises his brows, but it’s been almost four months and surely, surely, that fucking nightmare night can’t make her miss out on the happiest day of each of her friends’ life forever. She can do it.

She invites Daniel, because he’s wormed his way into her work-friend circle anyways, and buys a nice red dress for it. 

The wedding is in a chapel (not like hers), the bride is gleaming in white (just like her), and when the spouses exchange looks it drips happiness. Grace’s heart hammers too fast throughout the whole night, but she’s okay. 

When she steps into the aisle to find her seat her knees buckle a little, but Daniel extends his arm half-jokingly so it doesn’t look like she needs it for support when he hauls her off to their seats. During the vows she looks down at her shoes to catch her breath, and he shifts to prod at her foot, so she prods back, and they devolve into a frankly childish kicking fight that distracts her just enough not to puke. 

Once the ceremony is over, Grace finds she can look them in the eye again, finds that it hurts and it’s tense but she’s not anywhere near some breakdown. It’s staggeringly relieving. In some part of her head she’d assumed she would spend the rest of her life having a panic attack at the sound of wedding bells.

It’s with high spirits that she attacks the rest of the event, thus, giggling at Matt as he devolves into tears during his speech, watching her drink, nudging Daniel when some rich uncles start talking money. 

She loses sight of him at some point, figures he’s off flirting with bridesmaids. Then she turns from the cake table and sees him stood stock-still and white as a sheet, eyes fixed on her with the blankest of expressions.

“Shit,” Grace curses, to herself; Daniel’s glass shatters in his hand as she runs to him, and when she grabs his arms in support he’s shaking violently.

“Fuck,” Daniel says, would-be-bitterly, hands trembling and a little bloody. “Fuck, sorry. I-“

“It’s fine,” Grace hurries, moving him to the nearest steps, feeling like such a fucking asshole. She’s not the only one with wedding trauma, and this somehow eclipsed her. “It’s fine, I’m the one who’s sorry, are you okay? Do you want to- do you want water, is your hand- let’s sit down, okay?”

“It’s just that he looks like Alex,” Daniel says, not listening as she sits him down, eyes apologetic and distant. “And your dress is red, I don’t know, it reminded me of-“

“It’s okay,” Grace repeats, shuddering. The groom looks nothing like Alex, but then maybe Daniel sees different. “You wanna go home?”

Daniel starts at that, and after a second he nods, jerky. “I can take myself back, Grace.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Grace says, fiercely, forever nebulously angry at the rapidity with which he can smoothen his expression. “Let me grab my purse.”

They walk down to the street in silence, Daniel’s hands shoved in his pockets, and Grace feels furiously, helplessly angry, because he’s the one Le Domas with a soul and he’s having mental breakdowns at weddings. 

The taxi pulls up, and when they climb in she relaxes her iron grip on her bag and stares thoughtfully at the driver. Then she exhales.

“Take us to Disney World?”

“Excuse me?” the driver says, while Daniel’s head whips up. Grace only frowns. 

“Disney World. Please.”

The driver looks between the two of them, then shrugs and starts his counter, sensing a bargain. 

“Sure thing, ma’am.”

Daniel doesn’t say anything, but she catches him looking out of the window with a touch of a wry smirk ten minutes into the drive. Grace closes her eyes and listens to the traffic in the streets.

It’s an obnoxious hour of the night when they get to Disney, and all the hotels are overbooked, but when Grace flashes her credit card the suspicious staff visibly stops caring about the fact they’re dressed for a wedding and have no luggage. They get some kind of stupid suite called something Disney-branded, with a view of the Enchanted Palace, the valet informs them, megawatt smile never dimming. Grace smiles testily at him and locks the door behind him. 

Daniel stands immobile in the room for a moment, looking at the pink bed, then his eyes drift to the fireworks distantly going off outside the window, and finally he snorts softly and shakes his head. 

“I’ll take first shower.”

They both lie on their backs in silence when they’re done, wearing the provided gowns as pyjamas and drinking the shitty overpriced wine. 

“Thanks for this,” Daniel says. “Always wanted to sleep with Mickey Mouse looking at me.”

“Me too,” Grace answers. He seems amused enough by the décor to forgo his residual gloom, which is a welcome outcome. 

Later, turning on her side so she can scrutinise his profile, she finds herself asking a question she’s almost forgotten she wasn’t asking. 

“Why did you come to me?”

Daniel looks at her, then smiles sardonically. “Guess I thought you might finish the job.”

“Fuck off,” Grace says, though she suspects he’s not being entirely dishonest.

He stares at the ceiling long enough that she thinks he’s fallen asleep, then sighs. 

“I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to see if you were okay.”

—

Alex refuses to propose, time after time after time. He hates the institution of marriage, he doesn’t like state regulation, he doesn’t want to see his family. Grace doesn’t understand, can’t stomach it. Every time he says no it feels like he’s really saying she’s not enough. 

Good enough to fuck, not good enough to give his name. It’s untrue and it’s cruel but she thinks it anyways. 

In the end, she issues an ultimatum, fighting tears, and thinks that’s it. Alex proposing comes as a shock, somehow, has her crying and laughing confusedly. 

“What changed your mind?” Grace asks him, over and over, later, and he just smiles at her with his sparkling eyes and holds her hand. 

“I love you too much to let you go.”

—

They do all of the Magical Kingdom, in their crumpled clothes from the day before, Grace wearing the free hotel slippers that don’t quite fit her. They both smell of smoke and look like sex, which would explain why parents keep sending them nasty looks. Daniel is oblivious to these (probably used to it by now), and Grace smiles dazzlingly at them, sees what response she gets. Usually the kids smile back; she’s always liked kids. 

When they get on Space Mountain some kid who’d stood behind them in the queue turns around and says: “What happened to your hand?” in a comically loud voice, his mother looking mortified.

“I got shot,” Grace says. Wiggles her fingers. 

“Cool,” the kid says.

“I’m so sorry,” the mother starts, looking profoundly embarrassed; Grace shakes her head, doesn’t need to force a smile.

“It’s fine. Do you want to touch? It feels funny, see?”

The boy runs a finger along the scarring, then looks up demandingly. “Who shot you?”

Grace makes her eyes big dramatically. “My husband.”

The woman subconsciously looks towards Daniel, and the kid frowns. “Why?”

“He was crazy.”

“Did you shoot him?”

“No,” Grace says. “But he’s too scared of me to shoot me again.”

“Oh,” the boy says. Then the ride starts. 

When they get off the ride the kid and his mom are still there, and it’s Daniel he turns to this time, still intrigued.

“What happened to your neck?”

“My wife shot me,” Daniel responds, and grins when Grace snort-laughs at that.

—

They plan Disney into their honeymoon, as a joke but not entirely, so that they can take those pictures, right in front of the castle, happy and shiny and just a touch self-aware. Grace has never been, always too expensive, and Alex says she’s practically a Disney princess so this is a travesty. At that she flips him off, and he laughs, kisses her knuckle. 

She’s excited, though, Googles the parc to map an itinerary. They’re not a conventional couple, but hell, it’s Disneyland. Everyone wants cute pictures of them in Disneyland. She can read the captions in her mind’s eye, silly and snarky. 

_Beauty and the Beast (he’s Beauty). My prince charming (?). Wished upon a star and got this guy (I want a refund)._

Alex rolls his eyes and calls her incorrigible, fondly. Grace tells him just because he was raised in a palace doesn’t mean he can judge her for being excited to see one. 

Really, she just wants to be there with him. 

—

Late, when the park is about to close and they have to head back to the hotel, they walk past the Haunted Manor, stop to consider it as it looms over the valley. 

“I guess no morbid wedding stories for us tonight,” Daniel suggests, adjusting his Mickey ears. “This one even has extra paranormal touches.”

“I  am covered on that front,” Grace agrees. “Wanna go on the ride anyways and make fun of it?”

“Absolutely,” Daniel says. 

They’re the last people allowed on, and as they sit waiting, bathed in sickly green light, Grace looks at him, his tousled hair, the bags under his eyes, the pallor of his scar, the way the corner of his mouth is lifted slightly like he’s waiting to laugh at something, and thinks  _fuck_.

The ride starts, ghostly choir and all, and her palms are sweaty and she’s trying to remember what she last drank, sat poorly dressed in a children’s ride trying not to look miserably in love. 

“Doesn’t that ghost look  just like Aunt Helene?” Daniel asks, and then makes a startled sound because Grace has reeled him in by the lapels and kissed him. Possibly she’s finally lost it, but under the anxious thrum of her pulse there’s a kind of steely certainty she’s rarely felt before, and so when Daniel abruptly pulls himself away, making her fall over as they round the corner, it comes as a surprise. 

“Ow,” Grace says, rubbing her head and feeling vaguely caged. Daniel’s face is half-shadowed, and there’s some skeletons dancing in the mirror next to him; shock has softened his expression unfamiliarly, but his gaze is unflinchingly keen.

“What the fuck was that?”

“I don’t know what was up for interpretation there,” Grace says. 

“Why would you-“

“I  like you,” Grace interjects, before this can devolve into histrionics, because she can’t quite say love. “And if it’s not mutual that’s okay, but if it is I’m going to kiss you again now.” 

That almost gets him to smile, but still-

“I’m not my brother.”

“Thank fuck for that,” Grace sighs, and kisses him again. 

This time no one pushes her off. 

—

Daniel will never propose. If they want to have kids one day Grace figures they’ll adopt. There is no talk of a great big house in the suburbs. There are nights they keep each other up screaming, and days they struggle through, and the scars don’t fade. There is something guilty deep down in both of them that speaks in Alex’s voice. 

In the evenings when it’s getting colder they lie tangled under the blankets and Grace absently traces his neck, which Daniel says is some kind of psychological first step towards murdering him, to which she kicks him in the shins. Grace tells the therapist she’s happy and finds she means it. 

When she wakes in the mornings Daniel mumbles a vague hello, not half awake yet, and she faces the window as she checks her bag, absently thinking of some new code Matt texted her about. It’s routine by now; their routine. A good one. 

“Here I come,” Grace mutters, and sees herself out. 

**Author's Note:**

> Incidentally, Daniel’s new name is Daniel Walker, named after the whiskey brand. Matt from NASA insists they have to have a child called Sky and give it Daniel’s last name. Grace tells him to get a life. 
> 
> This was disgustingly fun to write. I don’t know if anyone will ever read this, but in the event someone has, I hope that I managed to touch on everything clearly enough. There was a lot to play with in the contrasts between Grace’s relationship with the brothers, setting up Alex’s eventual betrayal, and of course whether Grace is, excuse the pun, ready or not to move on from what happened. There’s a lot going on in the movie besides the funny stuff, not that I managed to replicate that here, but I at least wanted to have some ulterior themes going on. 
> 
> Thanks for reading this n tell me what you thought x

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Learning to Live Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24289180) by [saltysarah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltysarah/pseuds/saltysarah)


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